Of All The Travel Editors, In All The Towns, In All The World...

THOMAS SWICK TRAVEL EDITOR

"I am submitting a recent story to you for consideration. The article on Kodiak Island has not been published to date, although it is being considered by several editors at this time."

I wonder how he did with their names.

"Dear Ms. Allen, ..."

Even worse. Jean Allen retired from this job in 1989. Doesn't boost my confidence in the writer's reporting skills.

Here's someone with a little more on the ball, but a strange way of beginning a letter:

"Dear Mr. Swick, As we roamed the shore of the tiny island, Ramon sauntered up to us."

I flip over to the story, "Castaway in the San Blas Islands," and read the first sentence: "As we roamed the shore of the tiny island, Ramon sauntered up to us." By Page 2 I decide it's a little too similar to other island stories I've read. I grab a sheet of stationary and write: "It's a little too similar to other island stories I've read."

A piece titled "The Ultimate Jet Lag Test" has no author name anywhere on it. The Ultimate Freelance Test: Can you remember to identify yourself?

Here, I see, a woman from Texas has sent me a story about bicycling down from the top of Maui's Mount Haleakala. The writing, unfortunately, just doesn't have it; it lacks the detail and insight that would bring the experience to life. I start to write to her that it's a little too similar to other volcano bicycling stories I've read and then realize that I haven't read any others. I tell her the writing is a little too "matter-of-fact."

A man from San Francisco (most freelance travel writers live in California) says he "would like to submit a piece `Adventures in Castile.'" I don't like the word "adventure" -- overuse has made it a travel cliche, like "getaway" and "quaint" -- but I give it a look. (To be a travel editor is to be an eternal optimist.) He has a guide, who introduces him to an uncle and a cousin. They stroll around, buy some cheese. One man's adventure is another man's trash.

It's tough, I know. I freelance too, sometimes. I try to keep that in mind when I pen my notes -- all hand-written, on the assumption that rejection is less crushing when it's personal (or illegible). The point I try to get across is that there's so much writing out there -- a lot of it for free, on the wire service our paper subscribes to -- that to have success you should really try to come up with something fresh, distinctive.

So often freelancers go to the usual places, see the standard sights, and then produce similar stories. Which you can avoid doing, even when writing about an overexposed city like Paris, by injecting a personal voice (since each individual is unique) and a point of view. But so much of this stuff reads as if it was produced by computer. A novel about a travel editor's life could be titled "The Unbearable Sameness of Reading."

Yet here's something from a guy in Boca -- plain-looking cover letter (often, the more elaborate the stationary the worse the writing) -- about "an octogenarian's effort to live off the land (in Sugar Sand Park) for two days." I assume he's the senior Robinson Crusoe, but the man in the story has a different name. Still, it's good (talk about different), without a single reference to "Castaway." I write the author a note and ask him to give me a call.

Two cruise stories pop up; I save them from the grave by dropping them into my cruise file and writing to the authors that I'll hold them for possible use in one of our cruise sections. My standards drop when it comes to themed sections that are tough to fill.

Hey, an article on Munich's Oktoberfest. Haven't read anything about Oktoberfest for a few days. In the first paragraph the author tells me that Bavaria is Germany's "friendliest state" and that Munich has "friendly pubs." But I have to wonder when I finish the piece without having met a single German.

I write a note, saying that travel stories should not "tell" but -- through characters, dialogue, action, description -- "show" what a place is like.

Then I sign my name. It looks a lot like Thomas Swink.

Travel Editor Thomas Swick's column appears every other Sunday. Call him at 954-356-4731; or e-mail him at tswick@sun-sentinel.com.